Enlightenment and the French revolution

Htsrory ofEuropeon

Ideos,

Printed in GreatBritain

Vol. 13,No. 5. pp.633-636, 1991

0191-6599/91 $3.W+O.o0 Q 1991 Pergamon Pressplc

ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Aufklarung und FranzSsische Revolution III Ein Symposium zur Ideen und Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Oulu 18-20.11.1987 (Oulu 1989). AND&

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Among the big lot of very interesting meetings which were organised, or studies which were published in France and in other Iands in honour of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, may advantageously be placed the above cited miscellany. Seventeen papers, among them six in English, the others in German, put in concrete form the ideas discussed during the symposium about the Enlightenment and the French Revolution at Oulu (Finland) three years ago. Some of the papers relate directly to the French Revolution, such as Thomas H. Wendel’s, Franklin, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution (p. 5 sq.), Jukka Marjakoski’s, On the Division of the French RevoIutionary Movement in 1788-I 791 (p. 43 sq.), Aira Kemiltiinen’s The Idea of Patriotism and the French Revolution ~1~89-1791~ (p. 65 sq.), Sisko Haikala’s Deutscher ~akobinismus-ein prob~emutisches Forschungsfe~d (German Jacobinism, a Problematical Field of Researches, p. 133 sq.). Some of the other papers are more focussed, whether on the Enlightenment in general, such as Erkki Urpilainen’s Human Nature and Woman’s Nature in David Hume”s Thought, Timo Kaitaro’s The Properties of Matter and the Concept of Organicism in Eighteenth-Century French Thought (p, 30 sq.), Georg Gimpl’s Die Staatslinie. Zum Paradigmenwechsel der osterreichischen Philosophie in Maria-Theresianischen Reformkatholizismus (The State Line. About the Paradigm Change of the Austrian Philosophy in the Maria-Theresian reformed Catholicism, p. 224 sq.), Hannu Immonen’s The Legacy of Enlightenment Thought in Russia: P. Lavrov on Historical Progress, p, 317 sq., or about the influence of the French Revolution on contemporary writers or of the following generation, very known ones like Fichte (~anfred Buhr,Die Franz~sische Revolution und das Verh~Ztnis von theoretischer und pr~ktischer Philosophic bei Fichte, p. 153 sq.) and Hegel (Domenico Losurdo, Hegel, die Franziisische Revolution and die liberale Tradition, p. 211 sq.; Jacques d’Hondt, Was hat Hegei aus derFranz6sischen Revolution gelernt?, p. 228 sq.), or not so well known like Franz& (Juha Manninen, Frans Michael Franz&t und die Franzlisische Revolution, p. 176 sq.; Pertti Karkama, J. V. Snellman, Vormiirz und die junghegelianische Weltanschauung, p. 303 sq.) Three papers show the strong mythical century,

persistence of the French revolutionary ideas until the fifties of our those of Jouko Jokisalo, Die Franziisische Revolution und die biirgerbsche Geselischuft in der Ideologie des deutschen Faschismus, p, 339 sq.; *Bergstrasse

4,

D-5500 Trier, Germany. 633

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Jukka Nykyri, 1939-Die franzijsische Revolution im Spiegel der deutschen Emigration, p. 352 sq.; Peter Horak, Zu einer metaphysischen Kritik der Franzosischen Revolution: Albert Camus und L’Homme Rtvolte, p. 375 sq. At last, a special place must be given to a curious study which appears almost like a dialogue above one century between two philosophers, a Swiss and a German one, who had both a comparable influence on their contemporaries, I mean M. Havelka-P. Horak, Rousseau und Nietzsche: Zwei Typen der Auslegung der Natur in der biirgerlichen Denkweise und ihre Zusammenhtinge, p. 327 sq. All papers may be read with equal great interest. But it is quite difficult to choose the most interesting ones, because the selection depends of course on the reader’s particular specialisations. The choice must nevertheless be directed by what appears like particularly new in current researches or good developments about these matters, or what suggests most comments or thoughts. That is why I’d first choose the Aira Kemilainen paper which studies the evolution of the idea of patriotism between the second half of the eighteenth century until the end of the French Revolution. The lexicological study of the words ‘patriotism’, is never separated from the historical and political study. ‘nation’, ‘nationalism’ Kemilainen writes rightly: ‘ “Patriotism” was concerned with a political attitude to one’s own country or society’ (p. 65), and she further studies how the idea, the word itself and the adjective ‘patriotic’ were generally used not so much during the fore-revolutionary Struggle of Parliaments (p. 76) as at the beginning of the Revolution itself: ‘About two thousand items are listed for the year 1789’ in a catalogue of the Bibliothtque Nationale in Paris (p. 78). Then Kemilainen establishes the ‘Crisis for the word “Patriotism” and for Patriotism in the Old Sense in 1791’ (p. 88): ‘If we divide the 28 pamphlets of 1791 in our list according to their political attitude, 10 express fanatical or enthusiastic statements and 12 can probably be said to represent moderate opinions.’ (p. 89) It is interesting to notice that a nobleman, de la Croix, genealogist of the Order of Malta and a volunteer captain in the army (. .) stressed the significance of nobility and referred to Boulainvilliers’ in Hommage a ma patrie. Considerations sur la noblesse deFrance(Paris, 1790), which is ‘a letter addressed to the President ofthe National Assembly’ (p. 88). The French Revolution becomes more and more extremist, and the ‘enthusiastic’ ones, writes Kemilainen (p. 93), annexed for themselves the words ‘patriotic’ and ‘patriotism’: ‘An opponent of the Jacobins said that “Jacobin” meant “patriotic” (. . .) and an adherent of the Jacobins insisted that a radical attitude to the Revolution was true patriotism (. . .).’ (p. 92) And the words take, thanks to Napoleon, the sense they kept in France until nowadays: ‘the supporters of Napoleon Bonaparte emerged as patriots in the militaristic sense of the word.’ (p. 93) In the Conclusion, the author calls still to mind the former debate about ‘nationalism’ between Beatrice Fry Hyslop and Jacques Godechot. Kemilainen writes p. 96, exactly with the same words as thirty pages above, that ‘ “Nationalism” was seldom used, but when it was mentioned in France or Germany it had the meaning of national egoism or fervor’. In fact, the word really appeared at the end of the nineteenth century under the still republican Maurice Barr&s’ pen (Scenes et Doctrines du Nationalisme), of course in the context of the wish of revenge on Germany, in consequence of the loss of Alsace-Lorraine (Barr&s was from Lorraine) after the 1870 war, but also especially at the beginning of the theorisation of national French interests in

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Europe and in the whole world, a theorisation which will be achieved by Maurice Barr& successor, the provencal royalist writer Charles Maurras. So Nationalism cannot be reduced to a single feeling (expressed to-day in France by the word ‘patriotism’), but it also involves a theory of the Nation, its people, its mission in history and in the world, and its interests. But this old debate between ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’ has been thrown back again recently in France, and it has been established that in the time of the French Revolution there is no reason to bring into conflict ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism’: see Michel Winock, Nationalisme, antisemitisme et fascisme en France (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, ~011. ‘Points Histoire’, 1990), who writes about ‘a republican left nationalism, built on people sovereignty, and which called enslaved peoples to set them free from their chains’ (p. 12-13). So we could distinguish a ‘patriots’ nationalism’ during the Revolution, which gradually gave way to the ‘nationalists’ nationalism’ at the end of the last century. My own current researches on the Alsatian French revolutionary patriot, although writing in German, Auguste Lamey’s poetic and dramatic works, lead to similar conclusions. All in all, Kemilainen’s paper is very rich in information: at the end there are thirty-one pages which give an inventory of Publications from the revolutionary period (1788-I 792, especially 1789-I 791) with the shelf mark of the Bibliotheque Nationale. In front of each title are written short summaries of the works, and on p. 132, we can find a statistical table of them: all this can very much help the researcher. My only reproach is the author’s use of the adjective ‘fanatic’ for the revolutionary radicals, in a totally opposite sense of this word during the French Revolution, where it meant followers of the Old Rule, of the priesthood, of popery, of the aristocracy etc. We have unfortunately no place to spare to all the other papers, very interesting too, for instance that of Sisko Haikala on the German jacobinism, a good synthesis of the present historical researches in Germany: the title of the paper is in itself interesting, because it was more often used to describe the German revolutionaries rather ‘girondins’ than ‘jacobins’ (see for instance Jacques Droz, L’Allemagne et la Revolution francaise (Paris: PUF, 1949). Deutschland und die franzijsische Revolution, herausgegeben von Jiirgen Voss (Munchen: Artemis Verlag, 1983). On the contrary, the author establishes that most researches do agree that the German jacobinism is quite different from the French one, and that it is nonsense to describe as ‘girondists’ the German liberal revolutionaries (p. 138). So German jacobinists look far more significant for the history of Germany, as the single French import than formerly. But is there not any ideological purpose in trying to demonstrate the original German democratic roots-whether ‘liberal’ or ‘jacobin’-on which both German states created in 1949, the federal one, and the democratic one, could base themselves? Very interesting too is Juha Manninen’s paper about Frans Michael Franz&n, a Swedish poet who knew Georg Forster’s-the cisrhenan revolutionaryAnsichten vom Niderrhein, Brabant, Flandern, Holland, England und Frankreich (1790), travelled from Scandinavia to Paris and wrote a diary where he expresses all his feelings and disappointments about events and people. He also wrote a poem published in the Parisian newspaper La Dtcadephilosophique, Historique et Litttraire (First Nivose of the fourth year of the Republic), and Manninen says that every Finn knows the song Run, my reindeer composed according to the Franz&n’s poem the title of which is ‘To the french freedom’: the lappish reindeer

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was a rightly metaphor meaning freedom (p. 176-let’s note that the Corsican autonomist movement of the twenties and thirties also used a similar animal figure, the mouflon-a muvra-to mean holy freedom, ‘a Santa liberta’ which is still sung in the nationalist hymn U Columbu). Franzen is a link between the revolutionary movement and romanticism. Of course, he praises the northern virtues and among them, those like natural liberty, equality, happiness, community and so on that he heard with a rousseauist emotion sung at Bruxelles in the third verse of the Chant de guerre de I’armke du Rhin (i.e. ‘La Marseillaise’): ‘Amour sacri: de la Patrie . . . Liberte cherie . . .), and he tried to find it in Paris. He is also a link between the revolutionary movement of the Enlightenment and other ideological contemporary trends which have a few comm,on traits with the vision such as the French republican historiography tried to enclose in the French Revolution: the Franzen practices of the Swiss Pastor Lavater’s physiognomical theories to the peoples can easily lead to the nordic mythos of the twentieth century. But Franzen was not the only link: everyone knows how the northern germanic freedom was a commonplace not only under the pens of the aristocratic reaction (Boulainvilliers, Montesquieu), but also under those of the democratic revolution (Louis-Stbastien Mercier, Nicolas de Bonneville, Auguste Lamey)-the abbe de Mably being himself a link between these two trends grounded on the same mytho-historical basis. Franz&n’s ravings do not look more ridiculous than those of Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Pierre-Sylvain Marechal, Nicolas-Edme Restif de La Bretonne, Nicolas de Bonneville, abbe Fauchet and so on: all of them were more or less influenced by the illuminated freemasonry. His disappointment about the terrorist course of the Revolution must also be set in comparison with that of the French themselves (abbe Raynal, Restif de La Bretonne, L.-S. Mercier, La Harpe . . .) and of foreigners like the cosmopolitan German Georg Forster or the cisrhenan Joseph Goerres. These comments allow us to understand why the anti-nazi German Max Horkheimer could think in 1939 that ‘the order which began its way like a progressive one in 1789 should have from the beginning a trend towards National-Socialism’ (p. 368 of Jukka Mykkyri’s paper about 1939, ‘The French Revolution in the mirror of the German Emigration’). All in all then, an interesting and exciting miscellany. Perhaps because of a language problem, the absence of French communications and the small number of references to French researchers’ works is to be regretted. But on the other hand, this fact can remind us that the French Revolution is a legacy to the whole of mankind, and must be studied without any hexagonal prejudice. A last remark: what is important is the content, not the container of course. Nevertheless, we have to say that it was sometimes very difficult to keep the book open and read the small graphic signs, especially on the right side of the left page, and on the left side of the right page. Computer systems allow fortunately to publish quickly university works. But they have to improve the books’ presentation. Especially, a too great number of typing errors could be advantageously corrected (for instance in the Hannu Immonen paper). Andre Trier Universitiit, Germany

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